Thrice His Betrayer
by dragonwriter24cmf
Summary: Clara returns to face the Raven. She's not afraid, not when her heart and thoughts are full of the Doctor. The Doctor and all the times she hurt him, broke his trust, betrayed him. Not when she knows the price he's paid for her mistakes.


**Thrice His Betrayer**

The first time she betrays his trust and breaks his heart, it's not deliberate. It's not exactly an accident, but she doesn't do it on purpose. It's just that it's harder than she expected, adjusting to his new face and his new feelings and reactions.

She's heard about regeneration, of course, she knows what it is but whatever she was expecting – well, it wasn't this. This face that's old enough, careworn enough, to be her father's. Silver hair and deep eyes and deeper laugh lines and frown lines around his nose and mouth. Crinkles in his cheeks and crow's feet at the corners of his eyes. Hands with deeper creases and prominent veins and tendons in the wrists. He's taller than her in his new form, even skinnier and more awkward than before, with an unexpected wariness of touch and a different sense of fashion.

She was expecting something like her old friend. Someone young with brown hair that was a little too long and a lean, geeky looking face (his face looks more regal now). Nervous hands and smooth skin and close to her height, looking close to her age. She didn't realize that regeneration would change him so drastically. She wasn't expecting him to jump like a startled child when she tried to hug him, or go stiff at physical contact. She wasn't expecting band tees and thin hoodies under sports coats, or heavy velvet jackets that look lordly and mysterious, or like a stage magician's.

She pulls away, and it's only when Vastra scolds her that she understands how it looks. The condemnation from Vastra and Jenny stings, makes her angry, in part because she knows she deserves it, but she can't bring herself to do anything about it, can't bring herself to accept this new face and new version of the man she knew.

Even so, she doesn't quite understand the depth of her mistake. Not until he looks at her, standing in the street after they've defeated the robots in London. After the regeneration has settled and he's regained his poise and his memories and his coordination.

Not until he looks at her with wide eyes and speaks in a broken voice. "Please, just...see me. Just see me. Please." Not until he reads her face and his own falls, twisting in pain. "Of course you can't. You can't see me..." Anguish in a new-old face and grief in his voice. Grief and hurt, and she finally understands. And even if she didn't, she would after he calls her, after his old self calls her, and reminds her that he is afraid, and he needs her.

They both know that she doesn't come back for him, not really, not for this new incarnation of the man she once knew. She comes back because the man he used to be asked her to, challenged her to make it right, to face up to her fears and give this new version of himself a chance.

She knows, and he knows. She realizes later how much it had to have hurt him, to accept her back knowing she returned for old memories and a promise to someone he once was. How much it hurts when she expects things he can't do anymore, when she can't answer the question 'Am I a good man?'

And yet, he lets her come back, takes her with him across time and space, travels with her. Endures as she relearns him, endures as she slowly goes through the process of finding new things to love about him, slowly stops seeing him as a stranger.

He endures and he cares and he never says anything about it, but she knows she broke his heart, and even though it's forgiven, it can't be forgotten. _You can't see me._

He'll carry that scar from her for the rest of his days, for all their travels together, and never say a word.

 *****THB*****

The second time she betrays his trust, it's very much deliberate. Planned out, methodical, well executed.

She's mourning Danny, and in her mourning, determined to fix it. She knows the rules, but she didn't see him die, so it can't be a fixed point, can it? It might have been an illusion, a mistake. Or if it wasn't, he can make it so.

But she knows his rules about time-streams and fixed points, and she thinks, in her cold and broken grief, that he'll need – persuading.

So she steals his keys and she steals a sleep-patch, rambling on to distract him as she does, and then she drugs him and knocks him out and transports them to the heart of a volcano, where her threats can be made real. Of course, she'd normally die in such a place, but what's that mean to her, when she knows the environmental shield bubble of the TARDIS will keep her safe?

She stands on the edge of the volcano, next to the lava, and delivers her ultimatum. Bring Danny back. Repair the gaping wound in her life, or she will rip a bigger one in his. She will destroy his home, his transportation, his connection to the machine whose living heart and soul are bound to his.

He hesitates. She doesn't. One key. Two keys. Three keys at a time because he says 'no' to her three times in rapid succession. And then she's holding the last key, and his eyes are full of pain and anguish and torment, but he says 'no' again because the consequences of 'yes' are too dire to contemplate.

And it's only after she drops the last key and it dissolves that she realizes that, not only has she destroyed his connection to the TARDIS and betrayed his trust in the worst possible way, she's also destroyed her only chance of getting Danny back. She's not sure which she is sorrier for as she collapses into tears.

And then she finds out…it was all a dream. He saw her coming, saw her taking the keys and the sleep patch, sensed the terrible desperation of her grief. He gave her the dream to give her grief an outlet, and to see how far she would go.

The keys are all safe, haven't been destroyed. The same cannot be said of his trust in her, their relationship. That has been broken, and badly. To know that she would willingly, willfully, destroy the mainstay of his life has broken something in him. And apologizing means nothing, because they both know she would do it. Has done it, even if only in a dream. After all, she didn't know it was a dream. And despite her apologies and sorrows, they both know that she'd probably do it again if she thought she had a better chance to succeed.

The look in his eyes is perhaps the only thing worse than her grief for Danny. This is a man who would walk through fire for her, cross the universe for her, die for her and live for her, and she threw that away. And yes, she loved Danny. Loved him deeply. Thought she might marry him and have kids with him and spend her life with him. But she never meant to do this to the Doctor.

She always thought that if they parted, it would be a gentle parting. Sorrowful, but expected and accepted. She never thought she'd rip his heart out like this, discard his trust like a used tissue, even if it was momentary.

The worst of it is, after her betrayal, after everything she's just done to him, he's willing to walk into Hell for her. Literally if needs be. Willing to walk into whatever passes for an afterlife and pay any price necessary to get Danny back for her. In spite of the cost. In spite of the danger. He says 'go to hell' and she thinks it's a curse, but it's actually a promise.

He'll go to the end of the universe and beyond for her. To the end of life and beyond. Across dimensions and across the barriers of the multiverse if it will make her happy.

It doesn't end the way either of them wants, but it's not his fault. She gets to say goodbye, and she's the one to choose to deactivate Danny's emotions, and she's the one who sends him off. And it's not his fault that Danny gives his pass back to life to the little boy who died in the war.

He gives her time to make peace and find some measure of comfort, and that's really all she can ask for. It's all anyone else ever gets, and after what she's done to him, after the betrayal she knows neither of them will forget, it's more than she deserves.

Much more.

 *****THB*****

The third time she betrays his trust, it's almost an accident. It's not deliberate, just – she didn't think things through. She's been a little bit more reckless since Danny died. Besides, she thought she had the answers, an easy way to save Rigsby. Ashildir gave her a free pass, ultimate protection, so she's safe, right?

She never thought that Ashildir might be following someone elses dictates. She never thought that interfering in the contract of the Raven might mean that no one could interfere for her. She never thought that acting on her own could have such terrible consequences.

It's not the dying that bothers her. She can accept dying. The number of times it's almost happened since she met him has long since defused any fear of death she might have. But the look on his face, the terrible, terrible pain in his eyes, the helpless rage and anguish, so deep it could burn stars to ash – that she is sorry for. Sorrier than she can ever express. She knows her thoughtlessness has hurt him, hurt him badly. Once again, she's cut a wound that can never heal into his heart, and she doesn't know what to do.

The Doctor who pulls her into the extraction chamber isn't the same man who watched her fall. She can tell. There's something...wrong, something off, something awful in his eyes. Something broken, something like madness, and it's never more apparent than when he reveals that he's willing to kill in cold blood and destroy all of time and space to save her. Determined to save her and damn the consequences.

He tells her about four-and-a-half billion years and punching a diamond wall until he dug his way through it, and that's horrifying, but…

But she knows there's something else. Something worse. Something he won't or can't tell her. Something that's caused the madness in his eyes, so much more than grief.

She doesn't ask him any more, because she's not brave enough to see the shadows in his eyes, to watch his face as he relives whatever torment was inflicted.

She doesn't ask Ashildir after they've left him behind, his memories wiped so that he no longer knows her face or her voice. She doesn't think Ashildir knows, and she's not sure the other girl could tell her. Ashildir has all of history in her head and her journals, and that's more than enough. Besides, they're travel companions, the two girls who can never die, and there's no reason to make it strained when it doesn't have to be.

The thing is, they both know that eventually she'll have to go back. She'll have to finish what she started in Trap Street. She'll have to repair time. She travels to her heart's content, until finally she's made her peace with dying, and Ashildir's made her peace with living, and it's only then that she goes back to Gallifrey and the Cloisters, to the Time Lords waiting for her to fix things.

Ashildir keeps their borrowed TARDIS, of course, and she steps out and into the Extraction Chamber alone. Alone except for the newly regenerated (and newly female) Commander, and the Matron. "I'm here to fix things."

They smile, all relief and thanks and happiness, because it isn't their lives ending, and they no longer have to try and make a choice that they're not sure they could enforce.

She keeps going before they have a chance to get beyond that. "Before I go, I do have one last request."

And they're willing to promise her anything that a Time Lord can deliver. A happy dream to see her through her final moments. A message to her friends and family. But she wants none of those. She burned her bridges long ago, in her travels with Ashildir. Instead, she asks a single question, demands a single answer. "What did you do to him? To the Doctor, when you had him trapped in the Confession Dial?"

See, she knows it was worse than just loneliness and solitude and being trapped and punching through a wall of diamond. She saw that in his eyes, even when he could no longer remember what she looked like, no longer recognize her. And all her travels, all her experiences, haven't made her forget the torment in his eyes, the way he avoided telling her.

The Time Lords of Gallifrey don't want to tell her either. They shuffle and they hedge, and the Commander says in a halting voice "I would have let him out, if he'd only told us what we needed to know."

As if that's an excuse. As if that's a reason for four-and-a-half billion years of whatever he endured.

No, they don't want to tell her. She doesn't give them a choice. She's the one with the power here. Her choice repairs time or damns it. And this is her last request. She can afford to wait and they can't.

Eventually, the Matron gives in. "It was a long time."

"I know. I want to know what was done to him. It can't have been as simple as what he said it was."

"It wasn't."

And the Matron tells her.

Tells her about the 'transport chamber' that was also a rebirth chamber. Tells her about the lonely stone halls and the creature that prowled them, the embodiment of death and despair.

Tells her about the first tortured confession. _I am afraid. Afraid to die._

Tells her about the room with the bed and her picture and the footstool. The place where he could go to see her face and relive his memories of her. A mercy and a torment all at once.

Tells her about the breaking window and the dive and the fall, the way he nearly drowned only to recover at the last moment. Only to see the skulls around him in the water.

The Matron tells her about the room with the fire, and the drying clothes that are clearly his own, and the beginnings of understanding in his eyes as he dresses himself in dry garments and leaves the wet ones hanging there to dry.

Tells her about the digging and the grave that is not a grave, with the words 'I am behind 12' engraved in stone at the bottom.

The lonely days searching the fortress, dodging the creature.

The nights at the top of the tower opposite the chamber he arrived in. _If I didn't know better, I would think I had been transported into the future. But I...I've been here for…_

The second confession. _I didn't leave Gallifrey because I was bored. I left because I know the truth about the hybrid, and I was afraid._

The Matron tells her about the discovery of the room with 12 on the door, the wall of diamond 20 feet thick.

57 seconds, the time it takes for the creature to catch up with him from the other side of the castle.

 _How many seconds in eternity? And the Shepard Boy answers 'imagine a mountain of pure diamond that it takes an hour to climb, and an hour to walk around. Imagine a bird that flies to the mountain every 100 years and sharpens it's beak at the top of it. And when the mountain has been worn down to the ground, that is the first second of eternity.'_

57 seconds of pounding bare fists against the unyielding diamond, knowing the creature is getting closer to him, closer and closer.

The Matron tells her about the creature who catches up with him, a touch of fire and agony and unbearable pain that he doesn't avoid because he is still trying to break through the wall with his bare hands, even as dark hands seize him and he howls in torment.

Tells her about the long, agonizing journey back to the rebirth/transport chamber, the trails of blood and the torment of a body tortured beyond endurance and still moving, still standing. Still fighting. Blood and screams and cries and groans, and her name on the lips of a man who is suffering beyond anything she could comprehend.

Tells her about the connection to the machine, about the Doctor burning himself alive, destroying and remaking himself, resetting the castle, his newly healed hands running through the dust of his old body and reading his final message.

 _I think it's one hell of a bird._

And it repeats.

She hears the story with horror, with tears running down her cheeks, because that is so much worse than she ever thought was possible.

She asked him how he could do that to himself, and he didn't answer, but she didn't know the half of it.

"Did he know?" Did he know that he was repeating, reliving, such torture?

"Not for a time. But eventually, he realized. Somewhere around his four-thousandth year, I believe. He figured out the clues. The path was so ingrained that he could no longer forget it, I suppose. Even resetting isn't perfect proof against everything."

"How often did it repeat?"

"In human terms...perhaps once a fortnight?"

Every two weeks. Twenty-six times four-and-a-half billion years. That's how many times he drowned, he dug a hole that might have been a grave, he wept and confessed his fears, he beat his hands raw and bloody on a diamond wall. How many times he was trapped by a nightmare and tortured, how many times he traveled through stone halls on broken limbs, how many times he burned alive and was reborn to repeat his suffering.

God, no wonder there was madness in his eyes. No wonder he was willing to burn the universe to save her.

She chokes on tears. "Why..." She can't finish the question.

Why would he do that to himself, endure such things?

The Matron understands the question, and there's a small, sad smile on her face. "Because he is the Doctor. And he loves the same way he fights, the same way he hates and makes war and makes peace. With everything he has, everything he is, and with everything he might be."

She's right. That is the Doctor. How did she never understand that, traveling with him through time and space?

She steps back into the past, into Trap Street, into the moment she left two seconds and several lifetimes ago.

She's not afraid of the Raven. She wasn't before, but now, she welcomes it.

He won't remember her death, because he remembers saving her. He won't find her, because he can't remember her face or her voice any longer. She thought once that erasing his memory was also a betrayal, but she understands now that it was a mercy.

Now time will be repaired, and things will happen as they should.

She'll see Danny again. But most importantly…

She won't be able to betray or hurt the Doctor again.

 _ **Author's Note:** I don't actually have anything against Clara. This just sort of happened in my head. No idea why. I guess it's just something to do with the Doctor..._


End file.
